Psychology

by Robert Sessions Woodworth

Freud's Theory of Dreams

Just at this point we part company with Freud, whose ideas on dreams as wish-fulfilments we have been following, in the main. Not that Freud would OK our account of dreams up to this point. Far from it. It would seem to him on too superficial a level altogether, dealing as it does with conscious wishes and with straightforward fulfilments. It has left out of account the "Unconscious" and its symbolisms. The Freudian would shake his head at our interpretation of the lightning dream, and say, "Oh, there is a good deal more in that dream. We should have to analyze that dream, by letting the dreamer dwell on each item of it and asking himself what of real personal significance the stroke of lightning or the scar around the eye suggested to him. He would never be able by his unaided efforts to find the unconscious wishes fulfilled in the dream, but under the guidance of the psychoanalyst, who is a specialist in all matters pertaining to the Unconscious, he may be brought to realize that his dream is the symbolic expression of wishes that are unconscious because they have been suppressed".

The Unconscious, according to Freud, consists of forbidden wishes--wishes forbidden by the "Censor", which represents the moral and social standards of the individual and his critical judgment generally. When the Censor suppresses a wish, it does not peaceably leave the system but sinks to an unconscious state in which it is still active and liable to make itself felt in ways that get by the Censor because they are disguised and symbolic. An abnormal worry [{506}] is such a disguise, a queer idea that haunts the nervous person is another, "hysterical" paralysis or blindness is another.

In normal individuals the dream life is held by Freud to be the chief outlet for the suppressed wishes; for then the Censor sleeps and "the mice can play". Even so, they dare not show themselves in their true shape and color, but disguise themselves in innocent-appearing symbolism. That lightning may stand for something much more personal. Let your mind play about that "being knocked down by lightning and getting up again", and ask yourself what experience of childhood it calls up.--Well, I remember the last time my father whipped me and I came through defiant, without breaking down as I always had before on similar occasions.--Yes, now we are on the track of something. The lightning symbolizes your father and his authority over you, which as a child you resented. You were specially resentful at your father's hold on your mother, whom you regarded as yours, your father being a rival with an unfair advantage. Your sex impulse was directed towards your mother, when you were a mere baby, but you soon came to see (how, Freud has never clearly explained) that this was forbidden, and that your father stood in the way. You resented this, you hated your father, while at the same time you may have loved him, too; so this whole complex and troublesome business was suppressed to the Unconscious, whence it bobs up every night in disguise. You may dream of the death of some one, and on analysis that some one is found to represent your father, whom as a child you secretly wished out of the way; or that some one may stand for your younger brother, against whom you, had a standing grudge because he had usurped your place as the pet of the family. These childish wishes are the core of the Unconscious and help to motivate all dreams, but more recently suppressed [{507}] wishes may also be gratified in dream symbolism. A man may "covet his neighbor's wife", but this is forbidden, unworthy, and false to the neighbor who is also his friend. The wish is disavowed, suppressed, not allowed in the waking consciousness; but it gratifies itself symbolically in a dream; the neighbor's wife not appearing at all in the dream, but the neighbor's automobile instead, which the neighbor cannot run properly, while the dreamer manages it beautifully.

Freud has claimed the dream as his special booty, and insists that all dreams are wish-fulfilments, even those that seem mere fantastic play of imagination, since, as he sees it, no mental activity could occur except to gratify some wish. Further, he holds, most if not all dreams are fulfilments of suppressed wishes, and these are either sex or spite wishes, the spite wishes growing out of the interference of other people with our sex wishes.

The objection to Freud's theory of dreams is, first, that he fails to see how easy-running the association or recall mechanism is. It isn't necessary to look for big, mysterious driving forces, when we know that A makes you think of B, and B of C, with the greatest ease. The dreamer isn't laboring, he is idly playing, and his images come largely by free association, with personal desires giving some steer.

Another objection is that Freud overdoes the Unconscious; suppressed wishes are usually not so unconscious as he describes them; they are unavowed, unnamed, unanalyzed, but conscious for all that. It is not so much the unconscious wish that finds outlet in dreams and daydreams, as the unsatisfied wish, which may be perfectly conscious.

Another very serious objection to Freud is that he overdoes the sex motive or "libido". He says there are two main tendencies, that of self-preservation and that of reproduction, but that the former is ordinarily not much subject to suppression, while the latter is very much under the [{508}] social ban. Consequently the Unconscious consists mostly of suppressed sex wishes. Evidently, however, Freud's analysis of human motives is very incomplete. He does not clearly recognize the self-assertive tendency, which, as a matter of fact, is subjected to much suppression from early childhood all through life, and which undoubtedly has as much to do with dreams, as it has with daydreams. Freud has given an "impressionistic" picture, very stimulating and provocative of further exploration, but by no means to be accepted as a true and complete map of the region.